1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to board games and particularly to mathematical based board games.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Board games, and particularly mathematical based board games, are well known in the art. Examples of such prior art mathematical based type of board games are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 471,666; 3,659,851; 551,278; 3,024,026; 1,206,334; 3,390,472; 3,743,293 and 3,404,890. Several of these prior art board games employ the use of connecting pieces during the playing of the game, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 471,666; 3,404,890; 551,278 and 3,024,026. In addition, mathematical type board games based on the ancient Chinese game of NIM are also well known, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,743,293 and 3,390,472. With respect to the ancient game of NIM, this game is normally played by two players with the winner being determined, normally, by the last player to remove the last regular playing piece or, in the alternative, with the object being to be the player who forces his opponent to take the last piece, in that instance the player taking the last piece being the loser. At the start of play, there are normally provided several rows of playing pieces, such as a pyramidal arrangement comprising rows of one, three, five and seven playing pieces, respectively. The players thereafter alternate turns with at least one playing piece being removed from a row by a player during his turn, although the player may remove as many playing pieces as desired from a single row while being restricted from taking any playing pieces from two different rows during a single turn. This prior art ancient game of NIM is a mathematical based game and requires sequential and combinational analysis by the player in order for the player to consistently try to win. The complexity of such analysis can increase significantly as the number of rows and the number of playing pieces in the respective rows increases. However, once you have learned the basic mathematical winning strategy in NIM employing decimal-to-binary conversion, the game becomes no longer challenging as the winning strategy is equally applicable irrespective of the number of rows employed or the number of playing pieces in a row. The game of the present invention, however, as will be explained below, is a mathematical based board game in which the winning strategy may vary from game to game dependent on the ultimate game playing area and the permissible move patterns defined and may readily be handicapped by varying the types and numbers of playing pieces available to the respective players.